The Hoover Institution Archives only allows access to
copies of audiovisual items. To listen to sound recordings or to view videos or films during your visit, please contact the Archives
at least two working days before your arrival. We will then advise you of the accessibility of the material you wish to see
or hear. Please note that not all audiovisual material is immediately accessible.

Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky (SOS), formerly known as Scientists for
Shcharansky, is a private non-governmental organization created by a group of physicists
at the University of California, Berkeley. It came into existence in the summer of 1978
in response to the arrests of Yuri Orlov and Anatoly Shcharansky (later known as Natan Sharansky). There was a great deal
of concern in the scientific community over the numerous violations of human
rights affecting fellow scientists in many parts of the world. In the face of the seriously deteriorating plight of dissident
scientist colleagues, the group felt the need to plot out a totally new course of action on behalf of their beleaguered colleagues,
with the focus on the Soviet Union, but not exclusively so.

A guiding principle was to engage individual scientists to act collectively in unorthodox efforts to publicly "encourage"
the Soviet authorities to cease their human rights violations,by making the violaters pay a price for their transgressions.
Examples of such actions included an unprecedented moratorium on scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union, a "Hostages
for Elena Bonner" initiative where prominent Western scientists volunteered to serve as good-faith witnesses in the Soviet
Union during the temporary release of Sakharov's wife for medical treatment in the West, and picketing of embassies and of
selected scientists at scientific conferences.

Within a short time, the SOS developed into a nationwide organization with a membership of 2,400 scientists including 13 Nobel
laureates, 113 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and presidents of 20 major scientific societies, all committed
to a personal moratorium on scientific exchange with the Soviet Union. This action was quickly denounced in a major article
in Pravda, commissioned by the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which included
K.U. Chernenko and M.S. Gorbachev, future General Secretaries.

After the Soviet scientist and Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov was exiled to the city of Gorky in January 1980, SOS added his
name and extended its moratorium campaign internationally. Within months, SOS grew into an international movement to promote
the human rights of scientists, comprising more than 8,000 scientists from 44 countries.

As a result of the efforts of the U.S. government during the 1980s and the work of SOS, among others, Andrei Sakharov was
freed from his internal exile and Yuri Orlov was released from a Siberian work camp and allowed to emigrate in October 1986
as part of a swap that freed U.S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff and accused Soviet spy Gennadi Zakharov; he then went on to
establish a successful academic career at Cornell University. Anatoly Shcharansky (Natan Sharansky), who was imprisoned by
the KGB for his work on behalf of the Jewish emigration movement was also released in 1986 and settled in Israel where he
served for awhile as Minister of Industry and Trade in the government.

As promised in its moratorium pledge, SOS disbanded after the three scientists were freed.

Scope and Content Note

The Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky collection in the Hoover Institution
Archives was donated in 1998 by Morris Pripstein, professor of physics at the University
of California, Berkeley, and a founding member of SOS, on the 20th anniversary of the
founding of SOS. It consists mainly of the organization's correspondence and
administrative records (see
General Office File), as well as records of other organizations involved with the issues of human rights and writings of individual
scientists (see
Subject File). There is also a large volume of correspondence of the chairman of SOS, Dr. Morris Pripstein, with scientists and activists
representing various universities and organizations (see
Chairman's File). Finally, the audio-visual part of the collection forms a complementary addition to the records of SOS.